


Shou the Sociopath (working title)

by SScagnetti



Category: Fullmetal Alchemist, Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood & Manga
Genre: Swearing
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-10-10
Updated: 2013-10-09
Packaged: 2017-12-28 23:46:01
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,279
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/998339
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SScagnetti/pseuds/SScagnetti
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A fic that attempts to establish possible reasons behind the actions Shou Tucker takes in FMA Brotherhood. Lots of graphic violence and even more disturbing imagery about. Say hello to the life of pre-Nina Shou Tucker and what drove him to what he did, while telling of other "events" he violently caused or took part in.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Shou the Sociopath (working title)

**A PROLOGUE:**

The dreary rain had finally slowed up as the horse drawn wagon pulled up to a length of the winding gravel road it travelled along, where the break in the trees surrounding it was wide enough to maneuver into. Quietly in the mid-morning light the wagon made its way into the forest and along a vague, uncleared path that had brush low enough to pass through but not so much that it was by any means easy going. In the mud from the recent rain storms the movement of the wagon and the horses was even more laborious, but it never came to a full stop. Not until it reached a large dirt clearing a few miles off the road. Once it arrived there it turned in partway and and came to a stop. Off the front of the wagon stepped two men. Well, a man and a boy.

The man had been driving. He was a burly but rapidly aging Amestrian somewhere North of six and a half feet tall with steel gray stubble along his face and chocolate brown short hair along his head. The boy was a child of twelve, whose face carried nothing but fear. As he hopped off the wagon, no easy feat for his size that was most likely smaller than average, he took off his glasses to wipe them on his somewhat dirty shirt. The rain had smudged them horribly and made his own light brown hair stick to his head like wet fur. The man immediately headed to the back of the wagon after dismounting, mumbling to himself as if he were imagining a past conversation and things he should have said then. As he unlatched the back to access the bed of the wagon, he leaned over to remove a dirt caked old shovel from the outer tool rack and threw it to the ground. In a moment the child moved slowly to join him at the back.

The man was on his knees in the bed by this time, moving two very large burlap crop sacks toward the back to be hauled out. He turned to get out of the back and saw the child standing somewhat dumbfounded or daydreaming nearly right behind him --in his way.

“Get the fuck out of the way you slow piece of shit!” the man abruptly yelled in a booming yet shrill voice, “We don’t have much time and its cold as balls out here!” He turned from his knees to sit on his butt and swatted at the child with his large foot. The child moved back quickly, coming to a stop a few feet from the wagon; the whole time having never really looked towards the man. 

In another moment the man dismounted from the bed, the wagon lifting up a good inch after he got out. With clear strain the man pulled out one of the burlap sacks and threw it unceremoniously behind him into the muddy clearing. The sack was sewed shut all around with a stenciling of “POTATOES Appx 100 kgs” stamped onto its side. The contents were clearly close to that weight, though they did not fill out the sack in an expected manner that vegetables would. The sack was more slender than lumpy and the weight filled out one side and the bottom, with no mass in the top and opposing side. Like a long flexible cylinder was shoved in an L-shape into the bag. The second sack was quite similar, thrown unceremoniously in the same manner. The wagon lifted up even further when the weight was relived of it.

The man turned and picked up the shovel he had first removed and tossed it closer to the boy. With this motion the child seemed to come awake, his eyes filled with more fear than before. He picked up the shovel and moved quickly to the other end of the clearing. As he did this the man tightly grabbed both crop sacks, one in each hand, and began to drag them through the mud towards the boy. When he arrived he let go of the sacks and straightened up his back with a groan. He then turned towards the boy and spoke again, this time in a strikingly different tone from before.

“Alright, son, I’m sorry I snapped at you. But we don’t have the time to be fucking around here. So get to diggin’ the hole and be sure it’s at least as deep as that there shovel length and wide enough for both of ‘em. Do it like I taught ya, it’s good for you. It builds character. It will make you a man one day.” The father nodded approvingly at his own words as the child began digging. During his father’s whole speech he never looked at him. His eyes were trained on the sacks and the mud.

The child dug for an hour in the thick, clay-heavy mud. More times than could be counted the child slipped on the mud in mid shoveling and fell face first into his own pit. Sometimes the father would laugh at him, but no times would he assist him in climbing back out. When the hole was deep enough and wide enough for both sacks the child made his way out of the hole for the last time, his formerly slightly dirty clothes completely caked in mud and his glasses barely visible to see through --despite constant cleaning breaks that angered the father even more.

When the child was done the father looked over the hole, inspecting it like a construction Forman. With a nod of approval he beckoned the child to move out of the way as he grabbed the first sack with both hands and flipped it over into the hole. A wet splat and thud resonated as the dead weight impacted and the boy stepped back further, slightly startled. He clung onto the shovel which was slightly impaled into the ground in front of him like a planted sword to be used against something sinister that could emerge from the sacks at any moment. Or perhaps towards the man who now smiled maniacally as he looked at the sack in the hole.

“Perfect, boy, perfect! Glad we can finally get rid of this trash. Glad it finally rained so we could! You remember what I told you, right? Why we bury after rain?”, the boy nodded and the father continued his lecture. “That’s right! The ground is easier to work in and displaced dirt is harder to find after it dries if it was wet. Yessir, you’ll learn boy. This is what it takes to be a man!”

Still smiling and nodding to himself the man moved over to the second sack. Rather than picking it up, he instead reached into his pocket and produced a worn pocket knife. He flipped the loose assembly open and slit quickly across the top of the second sack. “Almost forgot.” The man mumbled to no one in particular. As he used his hands to pull the sack open he wrinkled his nose and recoiled slightly.

“Shiiiit! It’s too bad it didn’t rain any sooner. We had this little fucker sitting around far too long. You remember why we double wrap them now, boy?” The child did not nod and continued to look idly at the mud by his feet. Luckily, the father was distracted; he had wandered over to the wagon to grab a much smaller cloth sack from the head of the wagon bed. As he did this the boy looked into the now open sack. For the second time that day was forced to look at what was inside of them. He had tried to ignore the slightly lingering smell on the whole journey over but now that it was open and had been jostled around, it came at him hard. When it hit him the memories of that morning shot back into his consciousness hard. He could suppress them no longer. 

Suddenly he was again heading down the stairs in the separate earth cellar in his back yard, filled with the musty and rotten smells of decaying meat and produce. He was again seeing the two long objects tightly rolled up in white-cloth and bound with wire and rope. One was far dirtier and more stained than the other lying on that cold dirt floor, by then sitting in a pile of its own ooze. His father had turned on the single bulb down there that shone so dimly it was almost not worth using. He was working at the table, folding out a couple of old big burlap sacks. He moved over, picking up the cleaner cloth rolled object and setting it on the table, beginning to slide it into the sack. “Hey kiddo” he quipped as he toiled “why don’t you grab the other and drag it on over here! Hah hah hah!” But the smell of it, oh God the smell but he would hit me if I don’t move it but I don’t want to its awful I can see it falling apart inside. I know what it is I know who it is. But dad say’s do it BUT IT SEEMS SO WRONG BUT DAD SAYS DO IT.

It was too much. As Shou Tucker stood there staring into the opened burlap sack back in the muddy clearing, the smell of death pungent in the air and the rotting hairline and top of the head of that poor soul inside the bag sticking out of the end of the dirty white cloth it was once tightly rolled up in, he broke into tears. His father heard this and abruptly turned his head back from the wagon to glare at his son. He grabbed the cloth sack and tore back over to the large hole and the boy who sat weeping next to it.

“Don’t you fucking go soft on me or I swear to God I’ll put you in the hole too! You man up right now, boy, or you’ll lose the last of your baby teeth right here and now!” His father was teetering on the edge of the Rage. He was speaking in foul words and slurs that intensified as he carried on. But Shou could not stop crying. He had really always been crying. For years. Ever since the first time he saw his father strangle that girl in the woods behind their house years ago. Or the time he saw him beating his mother unconscious long before that. Or how he had known for years he had indeed had an older brother that dad had lost his temper at so bad he had to nearly be sewn together to be buried in the cemetery Shou spent so much of his time alone at.

But in a moment he stopped crying. Everything went white, then red, then black all in a second. Shou was suddenly on the ground with his ears ringing and his glasses off in an entirely different direction. His father had hit him, and hard. And like normal this had not caused his Rage to subside but rather made it worse. His cussing became louder. He threw the small sack he had carried back with him into the larger burlap one and then grabbed that with both of his thick arms and tossed it into the hole. The splat it made on top of the first sack was sickening; a thick, wet almost popping or bursting noise. Shou began to cry once again, feeling sick and confused and scared and above all else sad. Sad because of the things his dad screamed. He was a complete failure to his father. He wasn’t a man! He’d never be a man! He has no idea what it takes to be a good father, what burdens his dad bared! What an ungrateful little bitch he was. Like his Xingese whore mother. Why hadn’t he killed them both long ago? They only drained his meager earnings. His “boy” can’t even help him with The Most Important Task he gave him. Disgusting.

Shou’s father moved towards him like he was going to jab him in the ribs a good one with his foot, like he often did after he had floored him. But his Rage was starting to subside. Instead he let go a primal scream from deep inside his throat and stomped back through the mud over to the wagon.

“You fill up that hole now, BOY! Or else you lie down in there with them. I’m heading home, so you can just think about what you’ve done. About how _weak_ you are. You’re going to walk home to strengthen up, that’s your punishment. And you best do this job like I told you or I swear I will dig another hole myself! If they ever come for me, they’ll wind up taking you and your mother along with in body bags! If they can find enough of your bodies to even do it, I swear it!"

With that, he whipped the horses in front of the wagon with the reigns and took off. He swerved wildly around the clearing back towards the path they had come in along. Shou was still on the ground on his hands and knees, no longer crying but desperately looking for his glasses. As the noise of the wagon faded in the distance Shou felt a new emotion. One he would come to know well. It was the feeling of shame from his inadequacy and determination to be betting eating up the sadness inside poor, young Shou Tucker.


End file.
